SEOUL-- Without much starting pitching to speak of, the Doosan Bears rode their relievers hard and scored a bunch of runs to get by early on in the South Korean baseball postseason this month.
But that approach wasn't going to be sustainable over a long haul. And in a seven-game Korean Series against the KT Wiz, a team armed with enviable starting pitching depth and a sneaky good lineup, the Bears simply hit a wall and barely put up a fight.
The Wiz beat them 8-4 on Thursday to finish off a four-game sweep at Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul. Even if the Bears had won this game to stay alive, it's doubtful the series would have gone beyond five games.
The Bears finished fourth in the regular season and needed two wild card games to knock off the Kiwoom Heroes. Then back-to-back best-of-three series followed. The Bears went the distance before eliminating the LG Twins in three games, and then sent the Samsung Lions home by winning two straight games in the penultimate stage. They overachieved simply setting up the Korean Series date against the Wiz.
In their first seven postseason games, the Bears put up 55 runs on 88 hits. And they needed every bit of that offense, because they didn't have services of their two best starters, Walker Lockett and Ariel Miranda, each out with elbow and shoulder injuries.
Lockett was done for the season but Miranda returned for the Korean Series. But the bill came due in the Korean Series for overworking their relievers in trying to win earlier games.
Hong Geon-hui had done yeoman's work, but his fastball velocity suffered. He had sat above 150 kilometers per hour with his bread-and-butter fastball, but only touched 147 kph in his Game 2 appearance. Hong allowed a back-breaking two-run double to Jang Sung-woo in a five-run fifth inning.
Lee Young-ha, a converted starter, could always be called upon for multiple innings, but he had also reached his limits. He faced seven batters but walked four of them in just one inning of work in Game 3. He didn't pitch in Game 4.
To be fair, the Bears didn't have a choice but to rely on the likes of Lee Young-ha, Hong Geon-hui and Lee Hyun-seung. But in earlier games, they mostly pitched with a lead or in a tie game in late innings. The Bears allowed the first runs in all four games of the Korean Series and never once held a lead.
The Bears had three days off between the end of the Lions series and the start of the Korean Series. While they certainly needed that break for their relievers, perhaps some hitters who had been swinging the bat well earlier would have preferred to keep on playing with minimal time off.
They outhit the Wiz 9-8 in the first game but still lost 4-2. The next day, they bounced into four double plays, tying the record for most in a Korean Series game, and lost 6-1.
They managed only five hits in a 3-1 loss in Game 3.
Doosan manager Kim Tae-hyoung lamented that he couldn't have all key players get hot at the same time. Case in point: Park Kun-woo and Yang Suk-hwan, middle-of-the-order batters who had gone 0-for-14 in two previous games, had three of the team's five hits in Game 3. But then Jose Miguel Fernandez, the team's best hitter for the whole postseason, was held hitless. Cleanup Kim Jae-hwan struck out twice, including in the sixth inning with two runners on. Kim had a two-hit performance in Game 1, when Park and Yang, batting third and fifth, struck out five times combined.
Park got hot a little too late for the Bears, as his three-hit performance on Thursday went for naught. Fernandez and Kim drove in all four of the Bears' runs Thursday, but the five hitters behind them in the starting lineup all went hitless.
This was the Bears' seventh straight Korean Series, a league record. Manager Kim said Thursday he was already looking forward to a fresh start in 2022, knowing that extending the streak will be a challenge.
"We'll open the new season on a clean slate," Kim said. "Young players with no big-game experience had a valuable learning experience this month. I want to thank all of my players for coming this far. I can't even single out one player. Everyone did such a tremendous job."
Source: Yonhap News Agency